Mortal Kombat Series General

The debut episode of The Fight Network's newest podcast Keep It 100 has featured an in depth interview with former World Championship Wrestling star Ray Lloyd, better known to fans as Glacier.

The ice themed striker was conceived in 1996, right as MK Trilogy was hitting arcades and home consoles. Best known for borrowing liberally from Mortal Kombat at the height of its popularity! Just one year after the feature film hit theatres, the gimmick attempted to repurpose the concept of a stylized martial arts tournament fighter -- namely Sub-Zero -- for the weekly serial of professional wrestling.

As noted in a previous feature, it was a concept also pitched to ECW star and eventual WWE Champion: Rob Van Dam. As Lloyd explains, the idea was driven by WCW parent Turner Broadcasting and WCW President Eric Bischoff:

"I was an indie wrestler for years, like most people coming up through the ranks trying to get a break. And, uh. I actually moved to Atlanta. [...] Became friends with [Diamond] Dallas Page, and uh, so he kept pitching me to Eric Bischoff. Eventually, we had dinner - me and Eric.

Long and short of it was - he kinda grilled me with questions, for, I wanna say about three hours! 'Are you still wrestling on the independent wrestling scene?' I said, 'Yeah. I'm pretty much booked every weekend.' He said, 'I want you to disappear from the pro wrestling scene for the next few months. Totally cancel your bookings and just disappear.' So I really didn't know until the next several meetings exactly where things were headed, or where we were gonna try to go with this.

Anyone around then couldn't help but know what Mortal Kombat was, because it was so popular!

There were some people in Turner Broadcasting who were like, 'Hey. This is a pretty cool idea. Can we bring this into the ring?'

It was very clear to me after the first couple of meetings that this was something that Eric was very determined to do. I remember Eric saying to us, 'I want you guys to be a video game come to life.' We just figured - okay, well why not go watch people play the video game? Lets see what they think's cool about it.

We actually went to arcades - in Atlanta. Found one that had the game, and we would stand back and just watch people play the game. Just to get an idea of kinda what the characters were. We talked to gamers: 'What do you like about the game? What do these guys do that's really cool?' What ever those fans think is cool obviously could very well transition into the ring. Or at least - we hope it could.

I'm trying to kinda take all this in, and uh. We're seeing things happen that seemed almost to be like 'fly by the seat of your pants'. The first vignette when it ran - I wasn't even aware it was gonna run that night on Nitro. I remember sitting with the girl I was dating at the time - at her house - with her family - we were watching the show - and all of a sudden they start running the video!

I literally, I remember going to the phone and calling Kanyon, 'They didn't tell us they were gonna start running these vignettes!' So we had no idea that they were gonna start running them when they did. They really didn't go anywhere. At first, they did. They only revealed a little bit, then they kinda revealed a bit more. They got to that point where just, okay. Enough already! I mean, bring the guy out! But that's when, that was my first taste of -- I don't know if you want to call it mismanagement in WCW, but it just seemed like there didn't seem to be anybody steering that ship, and even though it was supposed to be Eric, he was getting really really overwhelmed with what all WCW was becoming."

"I thought they could evolve it more and drop some of the video game look to it, and just, y'know, streamline it a bit more. I wonder sometimes if it came along a couple years earlier, or a couple years later, what would've become of it? But, um, I guess I went from living as an indie wrestler, to basically that spot, overnight. Granted, I was ready for it. I was wrestling nine years, wrestling in Japan. I was ready! So, I wasn't like some, y'know, some naive kid.

Arn Anderson was someone who helped me an awful lot in WCW. And, uh. He really opened up to me and said, 'Hey, look.' Y'know. When Eric presented it to us, he kinda dumped it in our laps and said, 'Uh, here you go.' [W]e had no idea what to do with it. We had no idea what to do with it. And he said, 'That entrance is such an entity on its own!' And I'll never forget him saying this, 'You would have to walk on water to live up to that entrance.' Now - everybody has an entrance like that. But back then - this was '96 - nobody had an entrance like that! Not [Ric] Flair, not [Hulk] Hogan, not Sting/ None of those guys! Nobody had an entrance like that where you had lazers, the snow, and the ring gets dark -- no one had that. And as cool an entrance that was - that was the thing, okay. The challenge was: how do you live up to that?"

Mortal Kombat's wrestling connection has remained strong. In 1998, WCW would again be associated with the gaming license as TBS featured a line-up of WCW Monday Nitro followed by Mortal Kombat: Conquest.

Threshold Entertainment would bring the concept full circle, attempting to capitalize on the popularity of professional wrestling with the invention of Mortal Kombat: Federation of Martial Arts! The concept failed to be picked up as a televised series, but would enjoy a brief life as the first official MK webseries [">watch it all]!

Most recently; developer NetherRealm Studios has returned to the world of sports entertainment with their free-to-play app WWE Immortals. The current challenge introduces Johnny Cage to the hyper-stylized WWE world [trailer]!

I remember the first time I saw him, and how excited I got that my favorite MK character was basically wrestling in WCW. Sadly the gimmick never quite took off the way they'd hope. Glacier forever remained a mid-carder and then went mostly to jobber status after his tag team with Ernest Miller was dissolved. He's an excellent martial artist. His talent was wasted on WCW...they really should've utilized him more.

This is old news and doesn't really add anything about the MK-Turner connection like older articles and interviews did about this.

Remember, TBS premiere of MK included an internet-based behind the scenes audio with WCW wrestlers, not to mention TNT included Behind the Dragon with its premiere, although no wrestlers.

One of the WW3's (the one taht came out with MKA) were supposed to have been sponsored by Mortal Kombat Annihilation and there used to be a video of the commentators saying that but never any logos or official text mentions in the PPV.